I've found nothing on the net about this and none of the natives I've dealt with have a clue, so I thought I'd throw it out here.

The morphology of Russian numerals is very logical, except for the word for "forty", sorok. It is completely unique. My first Russian instructor, Mr Bockstein at DLI, told me it had to do with old magical numerals. I never bothered to press him nor any subsequent instructor further on the matter and it has haunted me since.

My Russian doesn’t even qualify for taking 1st uni semester Russian, but the way I understand it is that сорок is derived from, or can at least can be compared to, Greek σαράκοντα < Old Greek τεσσαράкоντα. So, no magic.

That sounds good, Anders. I vaguely remember an explanation that says that 'sorok' comes from an old Russian word that was used in the market place and referred to a package of something, but that could very well be a folk etymology. I'll see if I can dig up more details, but don't hold your breath.

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